Beijing locked down as fear spreads in India

The SARS virus has killed 12 more people in Hong Kong and infected 16 others, including two healthcare workers, the territory's government said yesterday.

The figures take China's death toll from the disease to 131 and cumulative cases to 1543, the government said in a statement.

The deceased were aged between 45 and 91, with eight of them having a history of chronic disease, it said.

A further 36 patients have recovered, bringing the total number of discharged patients to 668, the statement added.

China has reported another nine SARS deaths and 161 new cases, taking the nationwide death toll to 131, the health ministry said yesterday.

Eight of the deaths were in the capital Beijing, along with 126 of the new cases. The other death was in the northern Shanxi province.

China now has a total of 2914 cases and a further 1921 suspected infections, the ministry said.

Southern Guangdong province, where the epidemic began six months ago, had three new cases but no new deaths.

Beijing's third largest university, People's University, has been closed down because of fears of SARS, students said yesterday.

All gates to the campus have been closed and no one is allowed to either enter or leave, the students said.

Cinemas and internet cafes in Beijing were closed yesterday to halt the spread of SARS.

In a move reflecting the crisis mode in this city of 13 million, authorities shut down all entertainment businesses involving "mass public gatherings", including theatres and karaoke bars.

This was an open-ended measure, as the businesses would only be allowed to restart once the outbreak of the illness was under control, Xinhua news agency reported.

Beijing also closed down all public libraries until May 8 and stopped marriage registrations to prevent large gatherings at lavish wedding parties, state media said.

The stern measures were introduced as "Iron Lady" Wu Yi spent her first day as health minister. She promised a nationwide effort to contain the virus and threatening to severely punish negligent officials.

Thousands of officials were maintaining their effort to prevent SARS spreading from Beijing to other parts of China.

At railway stations, trains were being disinfected prior to departure while passengers were being monitored for signs of fever before boarding.

Taiwan's Department of Health said yesterday a 56 year-old man in Taipei had died from SARS, the first known victim of the virus on the island.

The news deals a fresh blow to government efforts to contain the spread of the mysterious virus, following an outbreak at a hospital last week that caused the number of cases on the island to spike.

Meanwhile, a 34 year-old Indian man has been diagnosed with SARS, a health official said today, the country's seventh case of the disease that has killed 295 people worldwide.

The man, who visited Hong Kong this month, had arrived in India's financial hub, Bombay, and was admitted to hospital last week after he developed a fever, the official said.

"He was discharged in Bombay as the fever went away and he had no other symptoms," the official said.

"But later, his lab samples tested positive and he was traced in New Delhi and was admitted to hospital on Saturday night," he said.

The eastern city of Calcutta and the western city of Pune reported one new case each of SARS yesterday.

Some doctors have expressed fear SARS could spread rapidly in India because of its congested cities and overstretched health system, but government officials have played down the chances of SARS becoming an epidemic in India.

Scientists recreating deadly 1918 flu virus

By Rick Wiles
May 2001
Copyright American Freedom News

Teams of scientists in the USA and Great Britain are working to recreate the virus responsible for the most deadly plague in recorded human history.

Between 20 million and 40 million people died worldwide in the 1918 outbreak of “Spanish flu.” Although the flu had nothing to do with Spain or World War I, the virus quickly spread around the world, attacking even strong and healthy humans. With the exception of Iceland and America Samoa, the deadly virus ravaged every place on Earth.

The first evidence of the virus in 1918 was an army camp in the US. Some scientists believe the virus was transported with US troops to France during World War I.

The epidemic came in two waves in the spring and fall of 1918. The fall wave produced a higher mortality rate. Many virologists believe the springtime virus acquired mutated and became even more deadly later that year.

The violent influenza ripped holes in the lungs of its victims. Their hands and feet turned black from a lack of oxygen. As the body fought for survival, the victims’ faces turned purple as they gasped for oxygen.

Now scientists want to bring the virus back – in the laboratory – to discover what made it so deadly.

That’s has some folks afraid the virus will escape and another plague will strike down possibly hundreds of millions of people the next time.

Professor John Oxford, of the Royal London Medical College, spearheaded the drive to recreate the virus. He began collecting in the mid-1990s tissue samples of people who died in the 1918 plague. Oxford believes genetic material extracted from the bodies of the victims will help scientists “resurrect” the virus.

He’s doing the research because scientists are expecting another worldwide flu plague anytime.

Oxford and his fellow scientist hope that be recreating the virus, and allowing it to infect human cells cultured in the laboratory, scientists will learn how to stop a future flu virus from killing so many people.

“We have go samples from 1918. We want to recreate the virus, look at it genetically and see if there was anything special about it,” Professor Oxford told the London Times in 1996. “We are only just beginning. We have identified the specimens. That has taken a year, to get eight lungs certified from people who died of influenza and not from anything else. We have also got eight brains from people who died of encephalitis lethargica which followed after in 1921-22,” the professor said.

Teams of scientists have searched permafrost burial grounds for the corpses of victims of the 1918 epidemic. Virus samples were taken from the bodies of six Norwegian coal miners who died in 1918 from the virus and were buried in the permafrost on Spitzbergen Island, inside the Arctic Circle.

The tissue samples taken from the remote gravesites are now kept in the US National Tissue Repository in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington. The lungs of other flu victims, preserved in paraffin wax in 1918, are also stored in AFIP and have been used to decode the virus’ DNA sequence.

The scientific project is making major strides in bringing back the virus. The US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has already worked out the sequence of two of the most important genes in the virus. The scientific team used materials from the institute’s tissue archives and from a woman who died of the flu and was buried in the Alaskan permafrost.

The London Times reported last year that a team led by Professor George Brownlee of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford has developed a method for recreating old viruses from DNA molecules.

“The technique is very simple,” Professor Brownlee said. “It involves adding 12 plasmids – rings – of DNA to a cell in tissue culture, and out pops a virus.”

Several months ago, scientists working on the project reported that their research has yet to reveal what made the virus so deadly in 1918. So far, they’ve been unable to find any signs of mutations or unusual properties in the genes taken from the flu’s DNA.

“What it says is that, once again, we don’t have a simple answer,” said Jeffery K. Taubenberger, a scientist at AFIP.

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